By David A.M. Wilensky, jweekly.com

A Hollywood icon made an appearance on opening night of the 44th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. And by all accounts, she was freshly washed, curled and darned.
Lamb Chop, the beloved sock puppet, was in rare form as she interacted with media and festival attendees alike.

She was on hand to promote Shari & Lamb Chop, about the life and legacy of Shari Lewis, the legendary ventriloquist behind Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse, Hush Puppy and a host of other characters. (During the post-film Q&A, Lamb Chop quipped that it rightfully should have been called Lamb Chop and Shari.)

In what turned out to be a genuine highlight of my journalistic career, I had the chance to do an on-camera interview with Lamb Chop. Shari died in 1998 at age 64, but Lamb Chop lives on, perched on the arm of Mallory Lewis, Shari’s daughter, who talks about Lamb Chop as a sister.

I asked Lamb Chop if she identifies as Jewish. She turned directly to the camera and said, emphatically, “I 100% identify as a Jew, a proud Jew!”

I also learned that Lamb Chop’s favorite holiday is Chanukah and that she loves latkes.

At 35, I am just old enough to remember Shari’s later shows on PBS, Lamb Chop’s Play-Along and The Charlie Horse Music Pizza. What I didn’t know until watching the film was that those shows were the culmination of a career that stretched back to the later days of vaudeville, where she learned her craft, and the early days of national television, where she became, for a time, a megastar.

Shari moved from stage to TV as a young woman when the world of entertainment evolved. Likewise, Lamb Chop and Mallory have moved from TV to social media — they have 153,000 followers on Instagram and 215,000 on TikTok — where they continue to speak plainly and lovingly to kids and adults about life, love, and the world around them.

Often, when living relatives are involved in the production of a biographical documentary about a celebrity, we end up with a shallow telling of the subject’s life that omits the most interesting details. But this one does not shy away from Shari’s troubles, particularly marital problems and low points in her career.

One detail that was only alluded to in the film was the misogyny Shari faced as a young woman in entertainment.

During the Q&A, an audience member asked Mallory if Shari ever experienced antisemitism in Hollywood. No, she said. But misogyny? Oh yeah. Every woman in Hollywood has been harassed, talked over, condescended to and underestimated, Mallory told the crowd — and it’s the same today as it ever was.

The film itself was well received by everyone I chatted with at the after-party. Shari’s career was so long that an interesting pattern emerged. Millennials like me remember the PBS shows from the late ’80s through the mid-’90s. Boomers like my parents remember Shari and Lamb Chop from their early TV work in the ’50s and ’60s. But Gen X missed out on the magic, coming of age during Shari’s wilderness years, when she struggled to find an audience on variety shows, with telethons and at state fairs.

Even if you don’t have a personal connection to Lamb Chop, it’s a fascinating look at the history of television from the perspective of a woman who profoundly shaped the medium in its earliest years.

JCC Film Fest presents Shari & Lamb Chop, 7:15 p.m., Thursday, June 12 at The Neon, 130 E. Fifth St., Dayton. $12. Purchase tickets here.

To read the complete June 2025 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.